These are especially challenging times. We are all encountering obstacles in the COVID-19 era, but our first-generation students are disproportionately impacted by family job loss, health issues, limited internet access, and other challenges. Within the first week that students were sent home from college, one of our students had each of the three members in her household lose their jobs; to date, no one has received unemployment. Another student’s father contracted COVID-19. Several of our students have had difficulty with shifting to online education and sometimes lacked internet connections. First-gen students are more likely to have responsibilities that go beyond doing well in school; they often need to contribute to the family and care for younger siblings.

With resiliency and determination, the students in our pilot cohort are finishing their spring semesters remotely and will be entering into their final year of undergraduate studies in the fall. Three of our ten students have secured summer internships, which is no small feat considering unemployment has skyrocketed from 3.5% pre-COVID-19 to 14.7% earlier this month. For the remaining students, we are creating a FirstGen Ahead Stipend Fund in partnership with the Steppingstone Foundation. The fund is designed to support them with paid summer opportunities that build their skills, networks and knowledge. I will be reaching out to many of our newsletter recipients with a request to help support our FirstGen student success by contributing to the fund.

This will be a busy summer. We have begun working with the Steppingstone Foundation in recruiting our second cohort of students for the upcoming academic year. I am also leading a group of five students in original research documenting the career trajectories of students who graduated during the 2009 Great Recession, which will generate useful lessons learned and be a great networking opportunity. There will be one newsletter over the summer, and I look forward to communicating with you again in July/August to provide updates and share what we have learned.

Susan Gershenfeld, PhD